TV

Update:Easy-TV.org is not providing premium content anymore. And according to some reports the site is full of malware. So I have removed the links to this site.

On this (link removed) page you can stream huge amounts of TV shows and Movies in very high quality (not compared to HD, but compared to other streaming services I have tried). TV-Shows on this page and Movies on this page. You have to install the DivX web plugin to make it work.

And, while you’re having fun – here’s another page with links to free premium content. Not the same quality, but lots of streams.

It’s the good old question of availability. If the content providers refuse to make their content available where people want it someone else will make it available. It will be interesting to see how long easy-TV.org last…

1. Write an article on your blog with a link to eirikso.com. Then write a comment here on this post with a link to the article on your blog. IMPORTANT: Use the email that you want the invite sent to when you comment here.

2. It has to be a blog or website that you have had running for a while. People creating a blog just to be able to post one article and link to eirikso will not qualify.

Okay, Doc Searls calls it helpful clues for the newspapers, but on the internet there isn’t that much of a difference anymore. So these clues are important for any media company that want success on the web. If you are going to follow one link today, visit Doc!

Eighth, uncomplicate your webistes. I can’t find a single newspaper that doesn’t have a slow-loading, hard-to-navigate, crapped-up home page. These things are aversive, confusing and often useless beyond endurance. Simplify the damn things. Quit trying to “drive traffic” into a maze where every link leads to another route through of the same mess. You have readers trying to learn something, not cars looking for places to park.

Now, if you add Doc’s clues for radio as well you have something to think about over the weekend.

NBC have been distributing trailers on YouTube for a while. Mostly trailers that they also run on traditional TV. Then, they get some negative comments about being commercial in a medium like YouTube.

It’s of course possible to simply put traditional videos on YouTube, and even have great success doing so. If the content is good you have the possibility to reach huge amounts of viewers.

However, the interesting stuff happens when you really use this new medium. Lonelygirl15 is an example of something that we’ll see more of. Using traditional story telling, but in a typical YouTube wrapping and form.

It’s the same old story. “Oh, we invented TV. Let’s take some radio presenters and put them in front of a camera”… And 20 years later this new medium of television has evolved.

Maybe we don’t need 20 years this time. NBC gets the message and produce this excelent promo, only for YouTube.

This might not look very impressive, but it is. By using lasers and all kinds of projection technologies we have seen different kinds of 3D images before, but all of them rely on something that reflect the light so that you can see the image.

Some of the most real looking and impressive versions of the holographic effects that you can see in movies like StarWars have been done using lasers and smoke in the room to reflect the image.

Image copyright Burton-jp.com

But what if you want a 3D image to appear in thin air? With nothing to reflect the light? Nobody has done that before using laser plasma this way.

That’s why the simple dots of light that you can see in this video are impressive. This is the Nipkow Disk of the 21st century. We’re on to something here. Before you know it Princess Leia will be right in your room praying Obi-Wan to help her.

Chapter 3 of my presentation from the Nordic Media Festival. You find the articles I have produced so far from this presentation here.

Some history

Six years ago I made some slides for a presentation at a big media conference in Stockholm. I suggested that we should have a look at how TV is distributed and take a closer look at the business model. Could new technologies change that model? To illustrate my point I made a comparison with the software industry.

This is how the business model worked when I bought my first license of Photoshop back in 1994. Adobe makes the software. They pack it and send it to the distributor in Norway called Office Line, they sell it to the shops where I buy my box of software. Illustrated by one of the biggest electronics retailers in Norway, ElkjÃ¸p.

For the last couple of years, that model has changed. I buy Photoshop directly from Adobe in the US. The product is delivered trough the net as a download. Both the distributor and the retailer are obsolete (for that kind of product).

This is an example of how the popular show called Friends was distributed in Norway. Warner makes it, the television channel TV2 buys rights and distribute trough cable, terrestial and satellite. Could something disturb this model?

More history – Bob the millionaire

One year ago I made a little comic strip to illustrate how horribly wrong the television industry was trying to deal with the problem of illegal downloads and the fact that the internet started to act as a reliable and high quality distribution model for their content. I include the story in my presentation, but here it is much easier that you simply have a look at the original post.

Okay. So what’s the solution to this problem? Availability. Make content available on the platforms that people use. And now, one year later the industry slowly understand this.

What added urgency to getting
Innertube deployed, CBS said, was
that CBS SportsLineâ€™s March Madness
was such a success, drawing five million
viewers and sending out 25 million
streams. It was, they said, the
largest live sports event ever on the
Net.

The day after March Madness
ended, CBS executives said, the phone
started ringing off the hook.
Advertisers had been so thrilled with
the results that they were looking for
more Internet entertainment videos.

But hey. The role that Comcast have as a broadband provider is very different from the role they have as a cable provider. The cable providers have valuable control of the content they deliver. They make the packages, they control the equipment. The encryption. They have the customer relationship. They decide what channels are going into the different packages.

As a broadband company the control has shifted entirely to the user and the content provider. Big difference. New rules. Of course they don’t like it. They try to make bottle necks. They try to limit certain kinds of traffic. It will be interesting to watch this space during the next couple of years.

The broadcaster’s nightmare

The day Warner find a way to earn more money distributing the content directly to you they will do that. Rendering the broadcaster and the traditional cable companies obsolete. Bad news for some television companies that lives entirely of content they buy, package and distribute.

Seriously bad news.

Yes. We still need the broadcaster to reach a big audience. We still need them to get attention to new content. We still need them because the risk capital often lies in the broadcaster. The production company wouldn’t even start producing without a broadcaster. But all of this can change. You won’t see huge amounts of broadcasters die tomorrow, but during the next couple of years some business models and traditional thinking have to be revised.

What’s next

It’s not about distribution. It’s about getting attention. In my next chapter from this presentation I will tell you why we don’t need the broadcasters to get that attention. I will point back to this post about the new face of marketing and commercials and give you a couple of thoughts on the future of the 30 second television ad.

The norwegian website Propaganda has an article out (norwegian) on how commercials now can be distributed through the net and can reach millions of people without the need of televison stations or cable companies. I used the fantastic Volkswagen commercials featuring Peter Stormare to illustrate this fact in my presentation at the Nordic Media Festival, and Propaganda asked me some questions. They have summarized the issues nicely in their article, but I have a couple of points to add…

Last year I posted a short article on the BMW commercial featuring Kermit the frog. A friend of mine, John Andreas Andersen was the cinematographer and I posted a couple of details from the production. At that point John Andreas had a very cool “making of” movie on his web site, but had to take it down after a cease and desist from Disney. Owners of everything regarding the little green celebrity frog.

Ever since, the search “BMW kermit” has been one of the most frequent searches that drives traffic from Google to my blog.

People have a genuine interest for this commercial. They miss the behind the scenes movie and want to know more. BMW hasn’t done anything about this fact. They have a huge audience that want their commercial. Seems like a dream for any marketer.

The making of is up on YouTube (at least at the time of writing this).

BMW had a huge success with BMW Films. A true example of how it is possible to reach out with commercials that people really want. The movies was made for distribution through the internet. They were so popular that they ended up screening them at cinemas in the US and selling a DVD with a collection of all the movies.

What happened to the Kermit spot? Why didn’t they buy the rights to the “making of”? Why is there no information about this spot on bmw.com? What should they have done?

Do like Sony

Their beautiful Bravia advert has been debated and praised by highly trafficed web sites. There is a big interest in the commercial and Sony has done something to meet this interest. They have put up www.bravia-advert.com. A web site with one mission, information and downloads regarding this particular ad. A look at the traffic rank for this site on Alexa reveals that making this site probably has paid off hugely.

I have never seen this commercial on regular TV. Still I know everything about it and have seen it several times on the net. Right now it has 3,4 million views alone on YouTube.

Welcome to a new world of distribution, marketing and the art of getting attention… More on this when I reach that chapter in my series of articles from my presentation at the Nordic Media Festival.